WANDERLUST PASSPORT

Photo Art by Melody Winnig

“Not all who wander are lost.” J.R.R. Tolkien

“We got a wanderlust passport here,” the customs agent exclaimed as my son came back into the US with his passport of many stamps. I too have a wanderlust passport and my photo art unfolds from those wanderings.

I am fascinated by border lands. There is an energy at borders, a heightened sense of awareness, a cross-pollination of cultures that thrills me. Sometimes dangerous, sometimes crazy, corrupt and generous. I have been stranded at borders, unable to bribe my way into either country. I have walked miles across the no-man’s land between two countries that were not legally connected, experiencing the strange earth in-between. Borders can be as dramatic as the one between two warring nations or as simple as the invisible line between two gangs or two ethnic neighborhoods. I wander along borders, camera in hand, taking photos as invisibly as I can.

“Here on the border they can no longer build walls high enough
Eventually we will see what is truly happening.
We will make full-hearted art and build a new syntax.” Bobby Byrd

My art springs from the unruly intoxication of possibility, from delving into the border lands between photography and painting. I begin with photographs and paint on them with water colors, oil stick, & pastels. I sometimes collage the images & add corn silk or sand. Then I digitally enlarge the images and paint on them again, hoping to make “full-hearted art” & capture a slice of the energy of the people and places where I have wandered.

For inquiries about purchasing
art, licensing images for commercial use or for information about creating commissioned
works from your photographs, please contact me at